I am beginning to run out of ways to tell about our walks
and dives, so maybe I will limit myself to recording the location, and
mentioning a few of the unique things we saw. Early in the morning we went
ashore in the Plaza Sur islet, which is separated by a narrow channel from its
twin islet Plaza Norte, off the east coast of Santa Cruz. Both islets are
erosional remnants of a lava field that was fed by a cinder cone on the shore
of adjacent Santa Cruz. We took a walk here not because of its geologic
significance, but because on the cliff that faces the open sea there are
myriads of sea birds.
Before we got to the cliff, however, we saw a hybrid iguana
climbing a nopal tree (yes, nopales here grow into trees, rather
than clusters). This iguana, we were told, is a hybrid between a male land
iguana, which are aggressive, and a female marine iguana. The hybrid is
apparently sterile (?), but has adapted to feed from the pads and tunas directly from the tree, thus
avoiding competition from its land or marine compadres.
Once we got to the top of the seacliff, which is a good 40 m
high here, we witnessed obsessive activity on the side of the Galapagos Shearwater,
which fly in big flocks that take turns to take off the cliff, swing around the
ocean looking for plankton, and return to the cliff, all in a matter of less
than a minute (I imagine that if they fid a patch of kreel they all dive in,
but today the pickings were poor). Also present were the by now familiar
Fragatas, harassing the also familiar Tropical birds, and a handful of pelicans
and seagulls. Wait, what is that bird that is brown all over? I asked our bird
expert Catherine, who dismissed it as yet another seagull. “But it is brown
both on top and in the chest”, I remonstrated. “What?!” Aha, now I had her full
attention. It turned out to be the elusive Brown Noddy! My standing in the bird
watching cabal has increased a couple of notches 😊
We also so sea lions. In fact, the day could be considered
sea lion-dominated. I am from California, so sea lions are a bit of old hat,
but my fellow travelers had to coo and sigh at the beauty of the baby sea
lions, who find in the channel between the islets a good place for Mom to bring
some food.
We didn’t snorkel that morning, because we needed to sail
from Santa Cruz to Santa Fe (a couple of hours), where we found ourselves a bay
where we first went for a walk to see more sea lions, and later for a nice
dive. I sighted three sharks sleeping at the bottom of the bay, a sea turtle
also resting in the sandy bottom, and two different pairs of manta rays.
Looking between the rocks I also saw the normal assortment of fish, sea urchins
with fat spines (I suspect they are fat because of secondary growths). Oh wait,
… wow … a veritable river of fish! They were some type of zebra fish, numbering
in the thousands, that kept to a tight school that meandered along the bottom
as a giant sea serpent.
From there we started sailing on a slightly choppy sea, to
cross to Cristobal Island, and pretty soon three or four of our group were
either puking or feeling queasy enough to skip dinner. Great. Double portions
for those of us who didn’t fall sick!
No comments:
Post a Comment